


May It Be

by belief_in_night (injured_eternity)



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-05
Updated: 2006-03-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:30:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/belief_in_night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life would play out... and he had to begin trusting it again, little by little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	May It Be

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 1x23 ["What You See Is What You See"]

Mac Taylor’s gaze followed his CSI out the door of his office, noting his pained expression, but his thoughts were interrupted by his partner and friend’s entrance instead.

“You just talk to Danny about the eval?” Instead of responding, his gaze unintentionally scanned over her, and she definitely noticed.

“You like it?” Stella Bonasera smiled slightly, baiting him and gesturing at the black dress she wore. He sent a nod her way. “Hopefully, my date will, too.”

He smiled in response, looking somewhat sheepish, and went back to her first question. “Yeah, uh, it’s all here. He went… He’s trying…” With a slight shake of his head, he looked back up at her.

“And then this comes across my desk,” he told her, handing her a folder on his desk.

She flipped it open obligingly; a look of surprise crossed her face. “Hawkes wants to work in the field.”

“Should have seen that coming.”

“Yeah, you and me both.” She handed it back. “What are you thinking?”

“I think… it can wait until tomorrow,” he answered after a moment. Mac rose from behind his desk and pulled his holster from his belt, locking the gun away in his desk drawer. “Right now, there’s someplace I’ve got to be,” he answered her unspoken question, slipping into his suit jacket.

His partner stared at him for a moment in disbelief. Mac Taylor, confirmed workaholic, was _actually_ leaving CSI at a decent hour like a normal person to _do_ something?? She shook her head mentally, trying to get the expression off her face before he turned to see her.

“I’m impressed.”

He smiled slightly, a smile tinged with a bittersweet sadness, as he avoided her eyes, staring at a spot off to the side of his desk instead. “I think it’s time.”

And that told her, more than anything, that he was healing, that he wasn’t leaving the lab to simply go home and think until his head hurt; he spoke of moving on from Claire’s death, of learning to live again, to allow himself to see others as _people_ , as friends, not just acquaintances. She found herself thinking how lucky Rose, the woman he’d saved at the coffee shop, was to meet someone like him. Internally, her heart applauded him—no more silent, private mourning, no more wallowing in grief he could not forgo, no more working nights without sleeping to avoid the onslaught of memories he tried so desperately to bury in the depths of his heart… at least for tonight.

A slight smile turned up the corners of her lips. “Let me fix your tie.”

She moved around the desk toward him, and Mac smiled again, the sadness gone, and allowed her to reach for him. His eyes met hers in a silent question as she unknotted his tie instead of adjusting it as her first words had implied. Then the sadness was back in his smile and his eyes shifted from hers as her delicate fingers worked at his collar; this time, there was something more: confusion… uncertainty… a strangled desire to say the things he was not ready to say… the things he was not sure _how_ to say.

Her own gaze danced between his face and his tie, her brain moving far too fast for the processes of reality. Her fingers grazed his throat as she slid the tie from around his neck and tossed it on his desk, opening the top button of his shirt, and she kept herself from telling him what she had wanted to tell him for so long. For now was not the time, and she knew it.

Instead, she just smiled again. “You just need to loosen up, Mac,” she told him and gently patted down his lapel, tucking it beneath his jacket, and stepped away.

Mac’s eyes flickered to meet her own as he tried unsuccessfully to pull his thoughts into words, but their long friendship needed no words for her to understand.

“You’re welcome,” she smiled, and brushed her hand across his cheek.

For the briefest moment, something akin to bittersweet happiness flashed through her emerald eyes, and had he met her gaze, he would have seen what they were neither of them ready to admit to the other.

But she remained unaware of what had passed across her features, as did he, and she stepped away, making her way back around the desk. “Have a good time,” she called to him over her shoulder as she left his office and made her way down the stairs.

Mac was left standing at his desk, staring after her for a long moment, his hand to his cheek where she had touched him. Never would he know if she returned his feelings for her, but they would remain his and his alone, at least until he was ready.

Stella had known Claire, been her friend and his, had known how much he loved her. She had been there for him after the towers fell, taking his love and his heart with them, and had helped him to slowly accept the loss, always watching out for him even when he himself had stopped caring, convinced that death was better than an existence without Claire. Stella had pushed him to stop drowning his grief in endless work, had taken him home the day he had finally broken open, finding the forgotten picture of his beautiful wife, taken a week before she was killed, in his locker.

And somewhere in the midst of a caring, strong friendship built upon a foundation of steel, he had realized that, on his part at least, the caring had transformed itself into loving without his knowing it. He had no way to know if she felt the same, no way to know if he threatened their friendship with such feelings, but he could not risk hurting her, could not risk destroying the one balance that had kept him going when the end had seemed the best way out. Perhaps one day, when the pain had lessened and his heart bore scars instead of the still open wounds, he would cross his fingers, pray, and try to speak to her; for now, he would not let himself make a mistake with her. He had blocked it off for so long; it could last a little longer, and he was not ready to speak his thoughts aloud.

Rose was certainly a sweet woman, and he knew her appreciation for that morning went beyond simple gratefulness for saving a life; for once, he did not shy away from that knowledge. He owed it to her to let her do something for him, to show his own appreciation for noticing him enough to make the first offer. He owed it to himself to learn to live amongst people again, to let himself see the beckoning light that life still had to offer him. And he was willing to let her play a part in it. So he left his office, hailing a cab to take him to the address she had given him. Life would play out; he had to begin trusting it again, little by little.

May it be…

Back at the lab, Stella leaned against the lockers, unaware that her thoughts ran nearly parallel to Mac’s as he stood in his office.

She had realized at some point that her feelings for him went beyond those of friendship, turning into a love that she could only hope would be reciprocated. But she had never pushed him, never said anything that could drive him away. What stood as a faint possibility between them would come when they were both ready, not before. While he still mourned Claire, he _wasn’t_ ready.

But something in his eyes tonight, in his quiet decision to learn to move on, had given her something to hope for, something to grasp. The joy she felt for him in his newfound mental freedom was still overlaid with a vise twisted unforgivingly around her own longing, but she pushed it aside, taking the hand he had, though unintentionally, offered her in those brief glances they had shared in his office. In time, he would be willing to reach out again, to offer the chance of a relationship with a man like him to some very fortunate woman; in the depths of her heart, she could only hope that she would be the woman to whom that chance was offered. Tonight she held that hope a little closer; tonight she could believe that one day he would be ready to take the next step. And tonight her heart told her that ‘may it be’ could one day turn into ‘has become’.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated._


End file.
